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60 thoughts on “New feature: Quote of the Week#1”

From commenter “007″ (quote of the week):
“I will be thinking about the 1.8 billion people on Earth who have no access to electricity, and how insane they must think we are.”
Well, maybe more that we are insanely hypocritical, since the purpose of Earth Hour seems to be to reassure all those people without electricity that they really don’t need it because WE can do without it for a whole hour – GP

Why are you against people thinking about the consequences of their actions? Watt drives those here to be so critical of those who do not share their views?
And yes – I did turn off my lights – but with CFLs and LEDs etc through the house we had already cut our electricity bill substantially anyway (saving us about $500 a year). That $500 pays more than twice over the cost of using green power.

DJ:
Let’s see, $500/12 = $41.67 per month.
My electric bill per month averages $52 and I pay one of the higher rates in the country – $.18/KWH.
Either you have your house lit up like a Christmas tree or your paying something like $1.00 per KWH.

Anyone that wants to submit a better feature logo that the simple one I cobbled together above is certainly welcome to do so.
Great idea for a new feature Anthony. My quote of the week on WUWT this week was:
Indiana Bones (09:53:32) :
To lose an appendage in the name of a falsified theory seems a rather unnecessary sacrifice. It is up to the sponsors at this point to pull the plug – get these poor souls off the ice and perhaps save three lives in the process.

DJ (12:45:31) :
Why are you against people thinking about the consequences of their actions? Watt drives those here to be so critical of those who do not share their views?
It’s called backlash. Get used to it because it is just getting started. As I have posted before, “the baby will be thrown out with the bathwater” as people get sick of being taxed & regulated for the non-problem of AGW. Society as a whole will catch on that AGW is just a political scam & all the good parts of environmentalism will be demonized along with AGW – and people who are really trying to do the right thing – such as yourself (& myself & Anthony , I believe) will be demonized too. That’s why truth in science and separation of science & politics is so important. I think that is the true goal of this blog.

Good idea. There are several gems each week and it will be nice to be reminded of one of the best. The first pick was a good one.
If I might suggest, how about listing the 2-4 quotes you considered and then identify your final pick?

That quote was an excellent choice—worth posting on the wall. The secret of prosperity is capitalism turned loose on resources, and the enabler is energy. The more energy, the more we can do.
There is no reason except hidebound political systems why all of the world cannot live at the level of the middle-class American, or better. When you consider that the entire Solar System is ripe for the taking, there is no physical limit to the resources we can develop, and no limit to the energy we can bring to bear, either.
The only limits are the self-imposed constraints on the human imagination, the kind of constraints that keep Islamist societies in feudal conditions, and the kind of constraints that nihilistic doomsayers and Luddites in the West wish to impose upon us.
/Mr Lynn

DJ “Why . . .”
Skeptics of AGW, as some of confess to being, must have a great sense of humor and a sense of irony. For example, those CFLs (aka pig-tail lights) are an example. I even have some. They are cute but they don’t light very well. They pause coming on. They take awhile to get to their ultimate brightness. They don’t fit everywhere. Cold temperatures may cause them to not come on at all. Oh, and if you break one you are supposed to open the doors and windows for 15 min. to air out the house. Did any clothing come in contact with the broken material – throw it away. And so on. Read the rest here: http://www.epa.gov/mercury/spills/
Then there is the CFCs of the ozone hole. This one was even more expensive. Now we learn it is a natural Earth-Sun-Solar system function and science and society can have another big side splitting laugh while we contemplate the consequences of our actions.
This post being about quotes, here are two:
“he used sarcasm to upset his opponent”;
“irony is wasted on the stupid”;
Johathan Swift
And another idea:
French wine withers on the vine
HEADLINE here: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/7969564.stm
And not a moment too soon. Think of all the CO2 produced by the little beasts of yeasts in facilitating fermentation. We’ll know the UN and its friends are serious about the connection between CO2 and AGW when they advocate complete cessation of beer, wine, spirits, cheese, and yogurt production. Stock up now!

Speaking of living without electricity, I did that during a lot of my childhood. I would not recommend it as a way of life. My father would get up a 5 in the morning to start the fire in the wood stove in the kitchen. Really the kitchen was the only warm place much of the time. For baths, water had to be heated on the stove and carried to the bath. Generally a bath would have 3 to 4 inches of water in the tub. One would hurry through it before the water became cool.
To flush a toilet, the water from the bucket would be poured in it. Luckily we were on a town supply of water so it would flow without electricity. If we had had a well, then we wouldn’t have had any pressurized water.
For lighting we had kerosene lamps and I still have a couple of them. Generally though it was early to bed, soon after sunset.
There was no radio or TV or any electrical appliance except an old hand crank telephone. I only remember the phone working once or twice early on and think it was disconnected after the first year or two there. There was a good library and other activities that kept us busy such as hauling up wood and splitting it, or going to the woods to cut down trees, or going berry picking and getting other wild foods. So overall it was enjoyable, more so for the kids than the adults.
Cooking on the wood stove is tricky and baking bread was particularly difficult. My mother never liked the wood stove. There was no refrigerator either, but buying ice kept a few things cold.
So overall, living without electricity is not pleasant. It is more like camping out all the time. I would recommend that people who support Earth Hour live 6 years without electricity and see how they enjoy it.

@Urederra (15:55:41) :
“”H.R. (15:31:12) :
If I might suggest, how about listing the 2-4 quotes you considered and then identify your final pick?”
Maybe in a poll format.”
Nah… My vote is for ‘no polls’ ;o)
Posters already give props to good posts. Tabulating poll results is just another chore for which Anthony has no time, I’m willing to bet.
I only suggested including a few ‘finalists’ because in the course of a week there are several gems posted and it seems like choosing one best quote of the week would be tough. It would be nice to see the contenders from which Anthony makes his final pick.

Do the quotes have to come from WUWT?
Daniel Hannan, MEP for South East England, recently said to Gordon Brown,(posted on ICECAP)
“You cannot spend your way out of recession or borrow your way out of debt.”
The relevance is that both Brown and Obama are planning on funding the economic stimulus spending by taxing emissions.

DJ (12:45:31) :
Why are you against people thinking about the consequences of their actions?

You have that exactly backwards. If you need a “special day” to make you think about the consequences of your actions you are an idiot!
If you think turning off your lights for an hour has any useful benefit to the planet you are simply not in touch with reality.
As pointed out in other threads, the electrical generation stations had to keep their generation capacity on line anyway. The only thing it probably accomplished was making life difficult for the operators at your local power grid as they try to keep power/voltage stable as folks suddenly unload the grid and then re-load the grid.
It is a useless token gesture to make people feel good, so they can pat them selves on the back and feel superior to other people, but has no useful impact on the problem they are attempting to highlight.
In short it is a waste of time and energy, both human and electrical (not to mention the fossil energy used to generate it). If you tallied up all the electrical load expended advertising the event it, probably exceeded the energy “saved” during the event.
Larry

“DJ (12:45:31) :
Why are you against people thinking about the consequences of their actions? Watt drives those here to be so critical of those who do not share their views?
And yes – I did turn off my lights – but with CFLs and LEDs etc through the house we had already cut our electricity bill substantially anyway (saving us about $500 a year). That $500 pays more than twice over the cost of using green power.”
Did you get the power plants turned off too? 1 billion (clueless IMO) people in 80 countries, and the list keeps growing.

“Well, maybe more that we are insanely hypocritical, since the purpose of Earth Hour seems to be to reassure all those people without electricity that they really don’t need it because WE can do without it for a whole hour”
Except of course WE don’t because even when we sit in the candle-light, electric pumps are still filling our toilet cistern and supplying water for our latte which in most cases electricity is also boiling as well as heating more water for our nightly shower.
Sublimely ignorant is generally as relevant as insanely hypocritical.

The slogan of modern environmentalists (and probably Earth Hour) is “Save the Earth.” Nancy Pelosi says it’s her job to “Save the Earth.” Does anyone know exactly what it is we have to do to save the Earth and by what measure are we to use to know when it has been saved? This is not a silly rhetorical question since untold sums of money are being poured into environmental causes and regulations without the faintest idea of what the goal is.

What is it with modern liberalism and “symbolic actions”? Turning off lights, kayak trips to nowhere, parading around with puppets, and throwing paint on things they disapprove of. Liberalism has become a creed of form over function. These symbolic acts have become the 21st Century’s version of indulgences. I make a gesture and then I can drink my latte feeling smug about how socially conscious I am. Of course the rest of us have to adhere to the rules they pronounce because we’re not part of the chosen and are living in sin with our incandescent lights.

Mr. Lynn; There is a limit on what we can extract from Solar System resources. Gravity. Putting anything in Earth orbit costs from $1000.00 to 10,000.00 per pound, depending on how much of the infrastructure costs you add to the fuel costs. The last I heard, the cost of moving anything from planet to planet would make shipping cut diamonds a losing proposition.

Posters already give props to good posts. Tabulating poll results is just another chore for which Anthony has no time, I’m willing to bet.
I only suggested including a few ‘finalists’ because in the course of a week there are several gems posted and it seems like choosing one best quote of the week would be tough. It would be nice to see the contenders from which Anthony makes his final pick.
Which sounds like just another chore for Anthony. Nothing to stop us posting our own favourites on the weekly thread.

John in NZ (17:39:30) :
Do the quotes have to come from WUWT?
Daniel Hannan, MEP for South East England, recently said to Gordon Brown,(posted on ICECAP)
“You cannot spend your way out of recession or borrow your way out of debt.”
” There is no crisis capitalism cannot buy it’s way out of, providing the workers are willing to pay.”
– Lenin –

Smokey said in reply to me
“Why only $50,000? Anthony could offer a prize of one million dollars: click”
Good idea-it will remind us of the dangers of treating money as a political tool-might be some lessons for those spending trillions on climate research-espercially as the science is settled. Perhps quote of the week could go to Einstein?
“If we knew what we were doing it wouldnt be called research.”
Tonyb

Well done, Anthony.
WUWT continues to be the best blog on the Internet, bar none!
I’m sure that fact alone drives the Warmers crazy.

My sentiments exactly! WUWT is, by far, the “Best Science” site in the intertubes, It makes Realclimate a fourth-rate runner-up.
If RC allowed differing points of view without censorship, it would start to achieve credibility. Hasn’t happened yet, though.

@tallbloke (22:20:53) :
“Which sounds like just another chore for Anthony. Nothing to stop us posting our own favourites on the weekly thread.”
Oooo… good point. Your suggestion kills all the polar bears with one shot, so to speak.

mr.artday (20:15:51) :
Mr. Lynn; There is a limit on what we can extract from Solar System resources. Gravity. Putting anything in Earth orbit costs from $1000.00 to 10,000.00 per pound, depending on how much of the infrastructure costs you add to the fuel costs. The last I heard, the cost of moving anything from planet to planet would make shipping cut diamonds a losing proposition.

That’s true now. But the cost is coming down, as we speak (and as private companies compete for launch business). Cheap access to low-Earth orbit has to be a high priority, especially for Americans, if we are to preserve the spirit of the frontier—which spirit, of course, the neo-Marxists and neo-Luddites are eager to squelch (turning out the lights is the perfect metaphor for their retrograde ambitions).
There are lots of interesting ideas for low-cost access to space floating around. Piggy-back launches, like Burt Rutan’s Spaceship One. Mass driver technology—I think it was Heinlein who proposed a miles-long chute in the Himalayas, giving ships a hefty boost in the direction the Earth spins. Then there’s the Space Elevator, a concept popularized by the late Arthur C. Clarke; even NASA is interested.
One way or another, we’ll bring the cost down, if we aren’t hamstrung by greenies and politicians. The resources are there (read John Lewis’s Mining the Sky). Mars is waiting to be settled, and maybe the moons of Jupiter and Saturn, too. “The sky’s the limit!”
/Mr Lynn

Quote of the week is a fine idea but there is so much more to go at. Though I have to admit that with so much material it could make a significant dent in available time (!).
Tenuous GW linkages, snouts in the Government pork dispenser, wild and wacky schemes, bogus science, statistical manipulations, bong driven green “workshops” …. the list is endless (and could very easily reach a “tipping point”)
Although GW provides by far the biggest target there are others. I was browsing around the “shrimp ate my experiment” story on NS when this caught my attention.
It does have a certain “Scientists accidentally create 150 foot killer Octopus” ring about it but quote value alone must be worth something…

Not surprisingly, toadlets were also worse than native frogs at escaping a simulated ant attack – being tapped five times on their bottoms with a pen.”

They could be awarded in categories (I’m sure the intrepid readership can come up with something)
Pork recipes …
Polar Bears ate my Radar
The glue dissolved my model
Just look what we’ve done to Venus
Just a thought.

My submission for the Members of the WUWT Academy to consider: from 3/30/09, (Earth Hour a Bust or Success)
Mike Bryant (18:26:10) :
“Roger,
It is funny and sad that the government does not have the science right to be able to properly “adjust the pressure on a hot tire.” But they DO know how to adjust the earth’s thermostat by controlling CO2.
The clowns have taken over the circus. — Mike”

Every year I am assured of at least 1 power out but usually 2 or 3 that last anywhere from a day to 3 days. I have many lifetimes of Earth hours saved up. Maybe I should raffle off a day here without electricity to the local greenies. I have a well so without power, no water. As well as no heat and when it is 0 to minus 20, that is not fun. The wood stove works but wood just doesn’t make it overnight. I end up sleeping on the floor near the wood stove a) because it is warmer and b) to wake up every so often and stick more logs in the stove. I can heat water for coffee on the wood stove and heat up soup but that is it for cooking. And no shower unless I wanted to go outside and drag in buckets of cold water, same with the toilet. It is a bad way to exist and I am glad I have never had to do it longer than 3 days. However my sister in the UK tells me “we didn’t used to have electicity, we can do that again” Not here you can’t and I don’t think so even in the UK.

I like the concept. It may improve some of the comments.
I would like to suggest a Question Of the Week. Every Monday post a question. Then the following monday re-post the question with the best answer.
Sample questions;
Peat and fossil fuels coal, oil, and natural gas contain carbon, where did the carbon come from?
Water vapor makes up 95% of the GHGs, why due the warmest temperatures on earth occur in the driest deserts where 95% of the GHGs are absent?
The answers would be infromative and stir up interest.

DLL: “DJ: Let’s see, $500/12 = $41.67 per month.
My electric bill per month averages $52 and I pay one of the higher rates in the country – $.18/KWH.
Either you have your house lit up like a Christmas tree or your paying something like $1.00 per KWH.”
Yes. In fact, at average US electric rates of 11.3 c/Kwh, and typical 65% savings for alternative bulbs, DJ would have to have had 275 11-watt bulbs lit from dusk to midnight every night of the year to save $500 annually. Hey, DJ, maybe buying the old Bijou Theater wasn’t such a hot idea, after all. Didn’t anybody show you where the marquee switch is?

I did not turn off the lights. I did take my family (5 people) to Florida for the weekend by airplane. Sorry we couldn’t swing the charter fee for a private plane.
Saturday night, we went out to dinner. We drove to the restaurant. I and Daughter #2, ordered the 30 oz. Tuscan Steak. My son joined in after he finished his cioppino. We drank beer.
I know it is not much, but we are doing what we can.

My nomination is JimB’s response to the rhetorical question below:
“Climate AGW Skeptic blinded by Cynicism and mistrust. Does it matter?”
Blinded! Oh no!
I thought it was just dark in here!”
Yes, it matters greatly.

How about web search of the week? Or, if I list it here, then it can be a quote from WUWT, right?
When you follow links from search engines, the target http server usually gets information that includes the search string, and some web site owners have low enough traffic so they can check daily. Like me. Here’s a good one from yesterday:
17:51:15 http://wermenh.com/climate/science.html
stakahama-wireless.dynamic.ucsd.edu
Science in The Age of Models: Is theory still relevant in climate research?http://www.google.com/search?q=Science+in+The+Age+of+Models%3A+++++Is+theory+still+relevant+in+c…
The people who can most benefit from that page are typically not people who search for it. However, a lot of people have found it because I have a cartoon of the Leaning Tower of Pisa and Galileo’s experiment there. The previous reference for my page came from a search for “galileo and the leaning tower of pisa”. The next came from an image serach for “leaning tower of pisa drawing”. Piza works, even pizza works!

This innovation suggests another one: retroactively (after a month or so) assign one or two gold stars to outstanding posts in these threads. The purpose would not be to encourage posters to do better, although it might have that effect, but to make it easier for newcomers and journalists to skim the site, and for our side to highlight its better arguments and facts.
Star assignments could be made by people who have good judgment and lots of knowledge of the issues, like Pamela Gray, etc.

jorgekafkazar (16:45:54) :
DLL: “DJ: Let’s see, $500/12 = $41.67 per month.
My electric bill per month averages $52 and I pay one of the higher rates in the country – $.18/KWH.
Either you have your house lit up like a Christmas tree or your paying something like $1.00 per KWH.”
Yes. In fact, at average US electric rates of 11.3 c/Kwh, and typical 65% savings for alternative bulbs, DJ would have to have had 275 11-watt bulbs lit from dusk to midnight every night of the year to save $500 annually. Hey, DJ, maybe buying the old Bijou Theater wasn’t such a hot idea, after all. Didn’t anybody show you where the marquee switch is?
So the cognitive dissonance has extended this far, eh? Wow. I think this is called rationalization.
I have no idea what my electric bill is, but my overall utility bill (CO Springs aggregates it) is around $200/month. Since I live in CO, that means nearly 6 months of heating, however, which is all NG. In the summer we use the AC for July and August, and the electric bill spikes then, but I’d be willing to bet $500 a year is on the high side of my total electrical bill. Much of that is from the summer AC time, too. In order to save $500… hehe, riiiiiiight.
Mark

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